Asha Praver is Spiritual Director of Ananda Palo Alto. Her sermons and classes are extremely popular; most are available at AnandaPaloAlto.org. She was a founding member of Ananda Village, having first met Swami Kriyananda in 1969. Asha is author of Swami Kriyananda As We Have Known Him, a collection of more than 200 stories told by people who have been touched by Swamiji’s teachings and spiritual friendship, often in miraculous ways: AsWeHaveKnownHim.org.

Letters from Asha

Thursday, June 23, 2011

I have been dealing with my mom for over 20years over man issues. She has married another man that has taken all her money and has left her broke again. She will lose her house and everything at the end of the month. Her debt is so high there is nothing I can do for her. My brother will help with the car payment, so she can at lest have a car. She has emotionally drained me, don’t know what to do for her. Also, I can really let it affect me. Any suggestions? I do practice yoga and kriya.

We have this sentimental idea that our families should be places of warmth and comfort. But Master said sometimes we are drawn together into families so we can “fight it out at close quarters.”

You have to assume that having such a woman as your mother is karmically appropriate. That the challenges that she has put in front of you are just what you need.

Although it is difficult to accept, clearly some kind of necessary balance is taking place, either with her as an individual, or in a general way for you. The beginning of freedom from this is to not feel that you are being treated unfairly.

Don’t misunderstand. I don’t mean that your mother is behaving well or that you have to go along with all her craziness or jeopardize your own well being in the name of helping her.

You still have to behave appropriately. And appropriate also includes what is right for you. There is enough modern psychology these days about the negative effects of “enabling” that I don’t have to reiterate that here.

Obviously, your mother does not want to hear your good advice. So it would be wise of you not to keep offering it. The point is to help her. If she isn’t ready to change, all it does is exhaust and frustrate you to try to change her against her will.

Difficult as it may be to stand by and let her crash and burn, it may be the only way she will learn this hard lesson. Her soul is guiding her into these hard times so she can learn the consequences of her wrong thinking.

My relationship with my parents bears no resemblance to what you have been going through, but there is a point where my experience may help you. At the end of their lives my parents suffered from physical and mental debilities. It was very hard to watch.

Because of the understanding I have of life and death, I thought it would be fine to pray to Divine Mother to take them out of those bodies and into the astral world. Something about that prayer, though, felt wrong. Finally I realized I was motivated mostly by my own discomfort and inconvenience and only secondarily was I thinking of what would be best for them.

Still, I was quite dismayed by their situation. I want to be completely sincere in my prayers, so to say, “Thy will be done,” just didn’t work for me. I had a lot of frustration and sadness that had to be included in my conversation with Divine Mother.

So I began to pray to Divine Mother in this way: “I don’t know what You are trying to teach them, but whatever it is, You need to get on with it! They may be doing fine, but I am not! I don’t think I can go on much longer in this way. You have to give them the openness, the wisdom, and the courage to receive whatever it is You are trying to give them! And please, do it now!”

I didn’t have a set wording, but that was the gist of the conversation. As you can see, I didn’t even try to make my side of the discussion pretty. Talking to God in this way about them completely changed my relationship to my parents. Their situation did not miraculously improve. In fact, it continued to deteriorate for several more years. But I had stopped resisting. Divine Mother and I were working together for their spiritual salvation, and that made everything different.

I also found this way of praying greatly increased my faith that everything was happening as it was meant to happen and I didn’t have to try so hard to “fix” it. Which of course meant I didn’t have to run around doing things as much as I had before, which made everything easier. I could just love them, accept them, and let their karma flow as it had to flow. It didn’t bother me the way it did before.

I hope this helps. This is obviously a very difficult situation for you. I will keep you in my prayers.

Blessings,
Nayaswami Asha

[Questions and answers from other Ananda ministers worldwide can be found on the Ask the Experts page of Ananda.org.]